Examination of witnesses (Questions 60-79)
DEPARTMENT FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
4 JUNE 2007
Q60 Mr Dunne: One of the issues that
emerges from the Report—you touched on it a little earlier—is
the difficulty of getting data below national level to assess
the impact of your aid spending. Do you agree that securing reliable
data in the donee countries is a problem?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Data are
a big issue in many of the countries that we work in. Data are
not a big issue in India, China, Vietnam or South Africa, because
statistical capacity and availability is very much correlated
with the state of development generally in a country and with
capacity in state systems. Those four countries would stand up
against any other developed country. However, data are a problem
in, say, Malawi or Mozambique, those sorts of places. What are
we doing about it? Well, as we have discussed in this Committee
before, we have invested a great deal in a number of international
initiatives to try to improve that situation.
The one initiative that I would particularly
highlight, rather than going through a long list, is called the
Marrakesh action plan. The importance of that is not that it was
in Marrakesh, but that it has essentially put finance into poor
countries to develop national strategies to improve their statistics
capacity. Ninety countries now have these strategies.
Coming down to country level, we have been
financing statistical development in many African countries. I
have seen it myself in Rwanda. We are financing censuses at the
moment in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Nigeria. We are now the biggest
donor of statistical development in Africa. We account for half
of all bilateral donor spending on statistical development.
Q61 Mr Dunne: That sounds credible.
Do you tie that to your aid? Is it a requirement that there is
improved statistical analysis?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We do not
have to tie it to our aid. It is part of what many of these Governments
want to do, because they also want better data. It is also part
of their having a better understanding of what is happening with
their money, because increasingly they need to explain to their
taxpayers what is happening with their money. So the Governments
want the data as well. It is actually quite a win-win situation,
in that sense.
Q62 Mr Dunne: Without proper data,
you cannot really assess whether you are being effective in getting
aid into these rural areas.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Yes, many
of these countries have very good district data, actually. Botswana,
a place that I worked in, has always had good district data, going
back to the 1960s. Mozambique has quite good district data, but
what it does not have is the ability to break it down even more
between poor and non-poor in those districts or between sub-districts.
So that is what we are trying to do. For example, there is a very
good map of Mozambique in the Report, which tells you the immunisation
rates, and so on, but the Mozambiquans, quite rightly, would like
to get below that level—and that is what they cannot do
yet.
Q63 Mr Dunne: When analysing your
own programmes, do you feel that your own self-evaluation is good
enough?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We feel
that it is very strong, but, as you know, the Secretary of State
feels we should have an extra degree of independence in that evaluation.
We are going to come forward with some proposals for how we might
do that. However, our evaluation systems have been commended by
the National Audit Office, the OECD peer review and very recently
by the capability review of the UK Government.
Q64 Mr Dunne: Is it more focused
on spend rather than outcomes?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: No, it is
increasingly focused around outcomes, but it is also looking at
processes, because processes matter, of course. I am making an
argument that what is key is the extent to which we are changing
how developing country Governments think about the rural poor
and about their policies, and so on. One also has to measure and
ask, "Are we really changing those policies and resource
allocations? Are we actually changing their minds about things?"
That is quite an important part of the process, as is the outcome
field.
Q65 Mr Dunne: Mr Harvey was suggesting
that it was a UK initiative to introduce an independent watchdog
for the FAO. I think that you just said that the British Government
have also decided to introduce an independent assessment of your
own evaluation. Does that mean that an independent aid evaluation
body will be set up to cover the work of the Department? Is that
what you are suggesting?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: In the works
now are a number of options that we are going to give to the Secretary
of State and he will present those to Parliament and decide which
one to go for. There are a number of ways of doing this, but it
would be a first in the whole international development field
for a bilateral agency to have this greater degree of independence.
The long-term prize, of course, would be an independent agency
that would look at the impact of all the donors together as a
collective effort, which the developing countries, rather than
the donors, would really be in charge of. That would be a real
prize, but I think that is some way off.
Q66 Mr Dunne: We touched earlier
on the EU budget and contrasted the effectiveness of DFID with
EU spending. You mentioned the treaty commitment; can you remind
the Committee what the treaty commitment is?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Basically,
the obligations under the treaty are as follows: there is a set
of budgetised aid programmes that the European Community runs—so
they are part of the European Union budget—which are focused
on Latin America, Asia, Europe and so on; then there is the European
development fund, which is outside that and focuses on Africa,
the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Q67 Mr Dunne: But this is not linked
to our proportionate contribution, so if you are successful in
the comprehensive spending round and increase the proportion of
GDP going into your Department, that does not automatically mean
that there is an additional contribution to the less effective
EU—
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: No; that
is quite right. It is quite an important point. Only if the EU
aid budget increases would we have to give an increased contribution,
because our share would—
Q68 Mr Dunne: Are you anticipating
that that is likely to happen?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We are some
way off from the next set of discussions around the EU budget.
Q69 Mr Dunne: But in terms of your
budget planning, are you anticipating an increase?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We would
have to expect some sort of increase.
Q70 Mr Dunne: At present, I calculate
that about 20% of our funding is going through the EU channel.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: If you were
to give me a free choice about this within the EU budget, which
I do not have, I would prefer to put more through the European
development fund, because it is more effective and we have more
control.
Q71 Mr Dunne: Would you anticipate,
given what you know at this point, that the proportion going through
the EU—whether through the development fund or through the
Commission directly—is likely to increase or decrease?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: The overall
proportion?
Mr Dunne: Of your budget. It is currently
20%.
Sam Sharpe: We know essentially
what the budgetised share of aid is for a number of years ahead,
so we would be expecting the proportion to go down, given what
the Government have said about the rise in the total British programme.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: So the rate
of growth in the overall programme is higher than the rate for
the EU programme.
Q72 Mr Dunne: Turning to specifics,
one of the Millennium Development Goals is universal primary education
for all, which I am sure everybody shares. There are various references
in the Report to different educational programmes and references
to the need to design and implement sound programmes for the delivery
of the different goals. Could you comment on the approach that
you take to working with partner organisations that have a good
track record of delivering educational improvement around the
countries that you operate in, and whether you would be inclined
to work with those organisations, rather than set up specific
projects with individual countries' education departments? Where
is the thrust going?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: The thrust
of this Government's policies is increasingly to back 10-year
education plans in these countries. The reason for 10 years is
that in education and health you need quite a lot of predictability.
You have to hire teachers, get text books and so on out there.
You cannot just switch the aid on and off. Those are essentially
Government education budgets that we are financing. Therefore
the key for us, in terms of this rural poverty issue, is to try
to make sure that the Government education budget is not skewed
to urban schools and is actually impacting on rural primary school
enrolment.
Q73 Mr Dunne: Where an existing voluntary
body or agency is providing high quality education covering rural
areas that meets the rural-urban test, would you look favourably
on applications from such a body?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We would
not deal directly with those applications necessarily in these
Government programmes, but—
Q74 Mr Dunne: I am thinking of trans-national
and I am thinking specifically of a British charity, Book Aid
International. Its budget, which you have been funding for 30
years, came to an end on 31 March.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: In these
Government to Government relationships, we would tell the Government
that they could use the money in a number of different ways. Many
of those Governments do not use it for public education systems.
They use it to fund voluntary, charity-run education systems.
It is the same in the health sector. Many of these countries do
not have the capacity to run public education systems.
Q75 Mr Dunne: Where an established
body is providing good educational product and outcomes across
a number of countries, such as one that covers 17 countries in
sub-Saharan Africa and has done so for 40 years, how does that
fit in?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Let us take
a country example to make it real. We would say to the Mozambiquan
Government, "In setting your education plans, in thinking
through what you are going to do for 10 years, you are going to
need text books and so on. You will want to think about the right
suppliers for these. There are a number of choices for you."
Book Aid International is clearly one of them as it has been a
good supplier of text books in Africa over a long period, but
it would be up to the Mozambiquan Government to decide whether
to use it.
Chairman: May I ask you, Sir Suma, to
raise your voice a little bit?
Q76 Mr Davidson: Like my colleagues,
I am very supportive of the work that you do. Many of us have
worked with various organisations. But I have never been entirely
clear whether you are any good. I want to ask the NAO how this
Department compares with other Departments in terms of value for
money and delivery. What sort of assessments have you made? Our
difficulty is that because so much of what it does is supported,
it is a bit like swearing in church or slapping a puppy on the
nose to criticise it. It is not the done thing. I am never quite
sure whether it is value for money or whether there are ways that
it could spend its money better.
Sir John Bourn: What the Department
does is different from what anybody else does.
Mr Davidson: That is always a good excuse.
Sir John Bourn: Let me put it
forward as a reason. Our general view of the Department is that
it has many strengths but it also has areas for improvement, including
those that we had analysed and proposed in this and other reports.
I suppose that if you sum them up you would say that it is stronger
on the ideas for helping countries overseas and weaker in being
able to prove that the money it has spent has really produced
the dividend. But, in that sense, it is not really any worse than
the European Union or the United States Agency for International
Development and what the French and German departments do.
Q77 Mr Davidson: I did not doubt
for a moment that it was not any worse than the European Union,
but that's a straw man isn't it? So, a fair analysis seems to
be that the Department talks a good game but we are not really
sure whether it actually delivers.
May I follow up on a point about the European
Union? The chart on page 22 shows that the European Union gives
15% to the poorest 10%. I would have thought that if there was
to be a focus on poverty, misery and general misfortune, the least
we could expect is 1%:1% and that the poorest 1% get at least
1% and the poorest 10% get at least 10%. However, we can see that
the poorest 10% get only 15% and the poorest 40% only get 28%,
which effectively means the section between 10% and 40%—30%—only
get, I think, 13% of the budget and the richest 68% get 72% of
the EU budget. That seems to be somewhat twisted. Is that simply
because the EU is completely corrupt and incompetent, or are there
other factors?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: I will answer
that, but first I shall answer what you asked the NAO rather than
me about.
Q78 Mr Davidson: We are limited in
time, so can you do so in about 30 seconds?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: I will.
Please look at the OECD peer review; please look at the capability
review; please look at what other donors and, more importantly,
developing countries say about us. We have been voted top donor
by developing countries, not just by ourselves.
Q79 Mr Davidson: Voted top donor
could just mean that you give money away for nothing.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Let me suggest
that you look at the evaluation of aid to Mozambique—not
done by us or by Mozambique, but by Tony Killick— and see
what it says about our performance, including on delivery. The
issues relating to the EU budget and poverty are essentially a
function of a political settlement that, in my view, does not
direct aid to the poorest countries.
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